


Iris Connection

by rainbowshirbert



Series: Living Myths (PJO Oneshots) [4]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: AND in the lightning theif, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Iris Message (Percy Jackson), Like Hinted, Pre-The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson), kind of, on annabeth, percabeth, thats right a 2 in one package
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:07:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25873336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowshirbert/pseuds/rainbowshirbert
Summary: Annabeth hates Iris Messaging her father. But she does it anyway.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase & Frederick Chase, Annabeth Chase & Percy Jackson & Grover Underwood, Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Series: Living Myths (PJO Oneshots) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2094222
Comments: 5
Kudos: 71





	Iris Connection

**Author's Note:**

> I'm proud enough of this to not post it only on tumblr (also thank you Kris for motivating me to put it here ily)

Annabeth was claimed quickly when she got to camp.

She was welcomed by her new siblings with open arms and given a bunk in the Athena Cabin. It was neat and orderly. She liked it. It didn’t feel like home yet, but it was something.

One of her older siblings, Greer, brought her in front of a small fountain of water.

“This is for Iris Messages,” she told Annabeth, dropping a gold coin in her hand. “Put that in the water and say the name of someone you want to see.”

“Anyone?”

“If Iris lets it through, then yes.”

Annabeth flipped the coin around her palm, feeling the smooth edges. It looked ancient, a language both familiar and unknown etched on it. “I don’t have anyone to call.”

Greer shrugged, but Annabeth knew she wasn’t convinced. All her siblings seemed as clever as she’d always thought herself to be. “Alright. Dinner starts soon. I’ll show you around when you’re ready.”

She walked out the door, leaving Annabeth in the empty cabin.

She let herself look around, looking at the clean workspace and the beds stacked up at the end of the room. It was how she’d always imagined college to be. 

Then she looked back at the fountain. The water moved soundlessly, and Annabeth could see her reflection in the water. She scrunched her eyebrows up, rotated the coin once more in her hands, then dropped it in.

Using her strongest voice, she said, “Show me Frederick Chase.”

The water swirled for a bit as if it were deciding something, but then it cleared and her father’s face came into view.

He was sitting on the couch with her stepbrothers beside him. She could hear the clattering of pans from far away that she knew was from her stepmother in the kitchen. His face was tense, but when one of the boys pointed at the TV, he looked down and smiled.

Annabeth felt herself boil in anger. She’d been gone for less than a month and life was back to normal.

She kicked the fountain, trying to disrupt the message, but it continued to play. Eventually she just stormed from the cabin and stomped her whole way to dinner.

***************************

After that, Annabeth found Iris Messages in general useless. She didn’t have any family or friends to contact unlike her siblings. She didn’t try to call her father anymore.

Most of the time, anyway.

Luke had spent the whole campfire ignoring her for a pretty Aphrodite girl with silky black hair, and Annabeth was sitting with her arms in front of her chest trying not to watch them touch knees and subtly intertwine ankles. She looked up and blew a strand of loose hair from her face. 

When the last of the songs was finally done, she ran towards the lake and stared out at the water from the dock. No one else went near the water after sunset, and the only sound was from the monsters in the woods.

She sat down on the deck and hung her legs over the edge so her feet hovered only a few inches above the water. 

The drachmas were in her hand before she could think.

It was stupid. She knew they didn’t think about her, so why was she forced to think about them? Why couldn’t she just move on and accept they didn’t want her? 

But she still tossed the coin in the water, sighing as she watched it fall and shimmer. 

“Frederick Chase,” she muttered, contemplating just kicking her toes through the water to break the connection.

But an image of her father chopping onions shimmered across the lake instead. He bumped his hip playfully against her stepmom’s, and she laughed. They looked happy as they tossed the food in the pan and let it simmer.

Annabeth had already eaten. But in that moment she hated that scent couldn’t travel through IM. She wondered if she could remember the scent of her old house or her dad’s shampoo.

She wanted to scream, or cry, no, not cry. She definitely wanted to scream. At him. 

But she couldn’t. 

So she jumped through the image and into the water.

It was cold and clung to her clothes before letting go and letting them billow around her. When she opened her eyes there was only darkness, so she squeezed them tight again and screamed.

She thought the water would fill her mouth, but she didn’t cough or stutter. She screamed as long as she wanted and the water stayed quiet.

When she was finally done, she started to break toward the surface, but then realized she wasn’t out of breath yet. Slowly floating toward the bottom of the lake, she shuddered and hit a fist to her leg. She hated herself. For putting that message through in the first place, for being weak.

The water just swirled around her. It was like two warm arms hugging her and holding her to them, and the pressure building up inside her finally escaped.

But then she couldn’t breathe and she kicked toward the air. When she broke the surface, she gasped, feeling the tug of her clothes toward the water. She climbed back onto the deck and walked toward the Athena Cabin.

Her other stepsiblings were waiting for her with a towel and clean clothes. And Annabeth reminded herself that maybe that family didn’t love her, but that didn’t mean no one did.

***************************

“What are you doing?”

Annabeth jerked back, swiping her hand through the water. “What? Nothing. Go away.”

Percy crossed her arms over his chest. “You were looking at something. I wanna know what it is.”

She got up and shoved past him. “It was nothing, okay? Leave me alone!”

Grover looked up at her from the middle of his reed pipes song, but she stomped past him deeper into the forest they were in.

She heard Percy ask, “What’s her problem?”

Grover finished his song before replying, “You know how she gets. Don’t take it personally.”

“That was weird, though. Right?”

“Annabeth doesn’t like sharing things with people. If it was important to the quest she would have told you.”

“We’re supposed to be friends now,” Percy said, a strain to his voice. “We had like, a super deep conversation about her dad and stuff. And now she’s back to being a jerk to me.”

“Just give her time. She doesn’t like to trust people easily.”

“Why?”

Grover didn’t answer. “...She’s been through a lot since she was a kid, with what happened when I brought her to camp…”

“Great, now you’re being cryptic too.”

“It’s just hard, Percy. You haven’t told her about Smelly Gabe.”

“What’s there to say? He ate and played cards all day while my mom worked herself to death. Whenever I was home he threatened to kill me. No one wants to hear about that.”  
Grover sighed. “You guys both need some real therapy.”

“That’s what we have you for, G-man.”

They started talking about soccer after that and Annabeth walked deeper into the woods, snapping branches with her feet. Percy could be a bit clueless sometimes, sure, but she knew he meant well. 

She just didn’t want him to see her dad’s face. She couldn’t explain it. Maybe it was because he was just an average looking guy who didn’t eat pizza all day on the couch. Or for him to see that she still cared about him. That a small part of her wanted him back.

When she returned back to their camp, Percy looked at her, then back at the acorns Grover had given them for “dinner”, and then back at her. His eyes were barely holding hers.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. 

“It’s fine,” she said. “I’m...sorry too. I guess.”

Percy shrugs and held up one of the nuts. “Acorn?”

She opened her mouth and let him try and toss it in. When they laughed together, Grover complaining they were wasting precious food, she didn’t care about her father as much. It felt like the night in the lake, a comforting, intangible thing, a warmth in her chest, the knowledge that the world wasn’t as dark and lonely as she might have thought.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to talk so feel free to dm me!
> 
> Tumblr: @mydramaticflare
> 
> Twitter: @rainbowsinmay


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